Firefly and Butterfly
by monkeymouse
Summary: Companion to "Firelight" by Cattail Prophetess. Cho Chang's side of the story...


Firefly and Butterfly  
  
by Monkeymouse  
  
Rated: PG-13 for f/f slash; if this bothers you, leave  
  
xxx  
  
I asked Ginny about her fascination with fires one time. She told me her earliest memory was seeing her father's head in the grate. He was traveling on Ministry business and checking in with the family through floo powder. None of which mattered to Ginny, who toddled over to daddy in the flames and almost killed herself before she turned two. The reversers could never erase the memory, although they softened it considerably. And, as a result, Ginny still doesn't think that what we love can kill us.  
  
xxx  
  
Bedrest and chocolate. That's an excellent prescription for a winter weekend with a lover. Watching the snow fall from within your own thick drifts of down, from sheets that started the day starched enough to cut you, but end up soft as dust bunnies and smelling of food and drink and sweat and all the secret places (and—of course—chocolate).  
  
When Ginny came through the Chamber, born out of that deranged womb void of all life's real magic, Dumbledore (she told me, so full of outrage that I had to believe her) recommended bedrest and chocolate. And what were they supposed to do? Unscar her spirit? Unrape her mind? Bring back, as if it never left, the unshakable virgin's trust that Daddy would leap out of the fire and chase the monsters away? Even the Muggles' most expensive, elite designer chocolates—scented with rarest wildflowers and wrapped in the wings of dragonflies—aren't so powerful as that.  
  
xxx  
  
It's no surprise that she was absolutely terrified of the first floor toilet for years after the Chamber pulled her in. She never went in alone if she could help it. And poor Myrtle didn't count in Ginny's eyes; she wanted a champion, someone who could actually fight off whatever monsters might come her way in there. (And in Hogwarts it's surprisingly easy to believe in monsters.)  
  
It was only by chance that, early in my sixth/her fourth year, I found her shuddering outside that bathroom. She may have been there for five minutes or an hour, but she looked at me the way she (and I know this) looked on Harry Potter years before.  
  
"Can you come in with me, please, Cho?"  
  
"Are you sick? Maybe you should see Madam Pomfrey."  
  
"I can't make it that far."  
  
Even if I were on my way to take my NEWTs, even if I were on my way to slay the Dark Lord, I would have stopped for the pleading in those eyes. But I wasn't going anyplace special—except in with Ginny.  
  
I waved at Myrtle, who waved back. I waited by the door, actually drawing my wand for dramatic effect (I was treating Ginny like a child, which shows you how childish I was). Ginny closed the stall door. Her hand must have been shaking, for a minute later I heard the soft clatter of cardboard on tile and saw the tampon applicator roll out of the stall. Then the smell arrived—that smell of death with gravy on top.  
  
xxx  
  
When I was seven, I was visiting a friend from school, Chisako Park (ethnic Korean, though the family had lived in Japan for generations before moving to England). While we were playing with her dolls—putting Merlin's robes on the Witch of Endor, putting the witch's robes on a sea serpent—someone starts screaming. Chisako's older sister Aya was having her menarche, and the screams were shouts of joy. I was immediately invited to stay for the party they would throw for Aya that night. According to their tradition, the main item on the menu was red beans and rice. Not exactly subtle, but they didn't shy away from the new facts of Aya's life.  
  
This wasn't Ginny's first time, but it was still strange enough that she was nervous and unsteady of hand and mind. When she finally emerged from the stall, pale and shaking as if she'd encountered some sort of harpy in there, she threw a "Thank you" in my general direction and started washing her hands as if she meant to take off a fingernail. That's when I noticed: below the hem of her robes, drops of blood had stained her stockings and spilled onto her shoe. She must have been in the hall wrestling with her fears for at least an hour.  
  
I simply walked up to her—no lecture, no admonishment—pointed my wand at her shoe and stocking. "Pristine"; that was all the charm it took to clean her up. Then I told her: "You'll be all right. If you need help in here from now on, just let me know."  
  
She didn't surprise me at first; she simply looked relieved. Like someone who'd just finished their OWLs to find that they weren't as difficult as they'd feared. She threw her arms around me, and this time her "Thank you" wasn't hurried or casual; she offered her whole self in those two syllables. We stood for a moment, with her head on my chest, my robes unclasped, showing my thin silk blouse and blue jeans underneath.  
  
As for what came next—I didn't expect it, and I can't believe that she planned it. I didn't wear a bra; I never do. I'm a true woman of the Chang family that way; we'll never be in the swimsuit issue of Wizard World. So my nipple may have shown up against my blouse. But it certainly wasn't large enough or interesting enough to entice Ginny to do what she did. She kissed the side of my neck, a kiss soft as the glow of a firefly on a summer night, then she nuzzled her face against my chest, and pressed her lips against my nipple.  
  
xxx  
  
If a little boy kills a puppy and knows what he's doing, we call him cruel. If a little boy kills a puppy and doesn't know what he's doing, we call him stupid. It makes no difference to the puppy: he's still dead.  
  
Society kills us in a stupid way. For the first two years (the Rules say), we can touch our mother's breast. Then: stop. No more. Never again. For consolation, we're allowed to Play. Children who run and jump and tickle and tag each other do so with an enviable appetite, as if they really are looking for a substitute for some tactile something that used to support their very lives, and as if they fear that this too shall be taken away someday.  
  
And it is. Another stop, when we get to be about ten. No more playing, never again. We're just supposed to—what? Wait, do nothing, keep our hands to ourselves. Mark time for years until someone else is allowed to touch us, and we can touch back. BUT: that other person has to be the Socially Acceptable Lover.  
  
So why, when Ginny embraced, kissed, opened her tiny mouth and swallowed me whole, did I know, understand with even more certainty than I felt toward Cedric? Why did I know that she was so completely, so unacceptably my fate?  
  
xxx  
  
I didn't move; I didn't want to move. I didn't want Time to move.  
  
I looked up at Myrtle. She shrugged. You live for decades in a toilet, nothing surprises you.  
  
After nobody-knows-how-many minutes later, Ginny seemed to come out of her trance. She pushed herself away from me, a great fear in her eyes. She managed a shaken "I'm sorry" before she fled the toilet. Leaving me feeling shaken, and hollow, and lost in strange territory with no map but Ginny Weasley.  
  
xxx  
  
Seekers have to be patient; it's in the nature of the game. You have to know when to chase the Snitch, when to search for it, and when to sit tight and wait for the Snitch to come to you.  
  
Oh, it happens. Maybe during one game in a thousand, but it happens; sometimes the Snitch comes to you.  
  
Ginny was of two minds—no, more like six or seven minds—about what happened. Like the old saying: "uncertain as a Snitch in a windstorm." So I let Ginny go about her business, while I circled the stadium. That makes Ginny sound like a Snitch, and that's cruel. But I wasn't about to chase her. I didn't want to pressure her. And I didn't want what I wanted to get in the way. This was for her sake, not mine. Something bigger than me, maybe bigger than Hogwarts itself, was eating away at her. I had to wait; there was no choice.  
  
Eight days. Patience was easy; you have to have it if you're a Seeker. You have to have it if you're the only Chinese student, at Muggle school or at Hogwarts. It's a survival skill. You learn when somebody says for the hundredth time, 'Hey, do you know your name means "butterfly" in Japanese?' that you're supposed to smile and nod and say, 'Really? Isn't that interesting.' Losing your temper, speaking your mind; these don't get you the Snitch.  
  
But eight days tested every drop of patience I had. By that eighth day the goblet was empty. We were practicing in the stadium, and I was preoccupied. I was missing easy chances at the Snitch because of my fear that I had done something to chase Ginny off. Even though I'd done nothing. Maybe it was because I'd done nothing. Davies put it down to the thunderstorm that was gathering that afternoon, ready to break at any time; all of us were jumpy and off our game.  
  
When practice was finally called because of the storm, I went into one changing room and the rest of the team into another. Being the lone girl on the team has its advantages, and certainly did that day, as the door opened and closed. I turned. Ginny, soaked and scared. She looked at me as if I had the power to send her back into the Chamber. Still, I waited.  
  
"Cho," she finally asked, in a voice that cracked like ice in a spring thaw, "do you…I mean…how would you feel about, about someone who, well, did things that were, well, kind of…"  
  
I interrupted her: "Ginny, I have a question for you. How would you feel about someone who wants you to do those things?"  
  
The way she let out her breath, she must have been holding it for a week. I opened my arms, and she rushed to me.  
  
One time in a thousand.  
  
xxx  
  
"Believe it or not: Ravenclaws have fun!"  
  
That was one of a bunch of slogans for Ravenclaw House that we came up with during my fourth year. "We" were a group of girls who couldn't get to sleep the night before the Quidditch match that year—the first match I was to play against Gryffindor and Harry Potter. We were sitting around the Common Room fire, throwing funny sayings back and forth. And it was Penny Clearwater (that's how I knew her when I first came to Hogwarts; I'll never get used to Penelope) who came up with my favourite: "Ravenclaws: Too Smart for Their Own Good".  
  
It's not that we're smart; most of what other people call brains is a matter of curiosity. We happen to have a great deal of it; some more than most.  
  
One time in Potions, Snape was talking about Dumbledore's discovery of the Twelve Uses for Dragon's Blood. But then he hinted that Dumbledore had also found one or two other uses which were so terrifying that he never talked about that part of his research. He had learned when to stop, and almost learned it the hard way.  
  
I said all that in order to say this: Ginny and I have gone like a house afire—intellectually and emotionally. Physically, we take it slowly. Very very slowly.  
  
That may be a disappointment to those who think that life should be like Those Books. And you know what Those Books are, and you know that I've seen them, and I know that you've seen them. But they've never told me anything I thought I needed to know, about being with Ginny or about being with the Socially Acceptable Lover. Those Books are little better than a collection of outlandish dances involving unlikely body parts, with the occasional infliction of deliberate pain disguised as love. Cruel or stupid.  
  
So we move carefully through the wilderness, with only each other as maps. And there's something to be said for that. Those Books always jump straight to the final verse of the song, with earthquake obbligato. I'm glad it hasn't been like that for us. This way, we savor the sparkling of a kiss, even with closed mouths. If we had rushed to use our tongues against each other's tongue, we would have missed a very tasty appetizer to the banquet. This way, we find so much pleasure in ourselves with our clothes on that we're in no rush to take the future step, taking off one layer or another, like insects shedding their skins to be born as other insects.  
  
Or maybe we're going slow because we're frightened, because we really don't know how far to stray, or if we might find the Thirteenth Use for Dragon's Blood and change things, completely, forever.  
  
xxx  
  
Ginny is, after all, the ninth Weasley at Hogwarts. Father, mother, brothers and brothers and brothers. She's walking a path that's been thoroughly beaten down, and she's trying not to be beaten down along with it.  
  
My dilemma's similar but different. I'm the only Asian in the whole castle. (I could count the Patils, maybe, but I probably shouldn't. I don't look any more like them than I look like Argus Filch.) My parents were born in China, moved to London, where I was born. There's never been a Chang at Hogwarts. I can't help but think people here are watching me. Off the Quidditch field as well as on. That they're measuring me against some ideal. These days I get the feeling I'm supposed to be Cho-cho-san, the Betrayed Butterfly (and yes, I've known about that opera for YEARS, thank you very much!) Only, I wasn't seduced and abandoned by some foreign sailor, but by a few simple questions and a few simple words from my most Socially Acceptable Lover.  
  
xxx  
  
Just as I try to be a safe harbour for Ginny when the Chamber storms through her heart and mind, she tries to return the favour if she thinks I'm falling to pieces over Cedric. I can never explain it to her, though; that I don't fall to pieces over Cedric, or even over losing Cedric. I fall to pieces over falling to pieces.  
  
There was no mystery to Cedric at all; he had no Chamber of Secrets. He was good-looking; he knew it, and so did half the girls at Hogwarts. He stood near the top of the short list for Social Acceptability; father with a good job in the Ministry of Magic, good looks, just smart enough. They were lining up during my fifth year hoping that he'd ask them to the Yule Ball.  
  
I didn't care. I didn't want to be asked by Cedric. Which is probably why he asked me.  
  
That was enough to turn my head, being on such a Socially Acceptable arm at the Ball. And the Second Task, where that awful poem convinced me that I was the one he'd surely miss… The Task told him he had to rescue somebody; his heart told him he had to rescue me. And that, as I saw it, was that. Between the second and third tasks I fancied my future self as Cho Diggory, with the finest house in London and an influential father-in-law and the most Socially Acceptable Husband in town, magically raising a brood of Socially Acceptable Minor Diggorys…  
  
Until the day of the Third Task. Cedric's parents came down to watch his triumph. He introduced me to them; I found his father overbearing and altogether full of himself. I prayed Cedric wouldn't be like him.  
  
He was worse.  
  
Hours before the Task, Cedric called me aside… and this is something I haven't even told Ginny yet. Perhaps I never will. I couldn't talk about it with Cedric dead; why spoil the party?  
  
Because Cedric told me, with no remorse in his voice at all, that he was breaking it off between us, from that moment on. Why? I asked. Didn't he feel that we meant something to each other? Be that as it may, he said, his father told him to break it off and be on the lookout for "a proper girlfriend—someone more like us." And he wouldn't give a thought to defying his father.  
  
In a breath, I had become the Socially Unacceptable Lover, in Amos Diggory's eyes, and now in Cedric's.  
  
My anger at the pair of them felt like a river at the flood. If I didn't try to control it, the damage could be beyond calculation. But even in rage and bitterness, I couldn't just burst loose and scream at him. I fell back on sarcasm, wishing him a happy marriage and not meaning a letter of it. And three hours later he was dead.  
  
I thought I knew better than that; better than to fall unthinking and adoring for a Socially Acceptable Lover. I swore I would do anything, anything at all, to see to it that I never, never played the part of Cho- cho-san the Betrayed Butterfly.  
  
Serves me right.  
  
xxx  
  
I'm sure that to anyone who knew about us (and, for Ginny's sake, and damn it, I'm no hero, for my sake as well—I've tried my hardest to make sure that nobody knows) we would be the oddest couple on campus. The Weasley look—the famous red hair and freckles—are about as far from me as…let's see…Cedric Diggory was from Vincent Crabbe.  
  
But we have a few things in common—apart from each other. And one of them is Harry Potter.  
  
To me it's just another difference. I was born BP, Ginny was born AP. Before Potter, After Potter. She literally grew up her whole life hearing about The Hero Who Vanquished the Dark Lord. I heard about it, too, but I was already two years old when my parents described him as "a baby". I couldn't help it; I felt superior. I may have still been "too young" for a lot of things grownups didn't want me to know, but at least I wasn't "a baby".  
  
I watched him being Sorted. I watched his first games of Quidditch. And I kept thinking of him as a "baby". I held that one-year difference between us back then like a shield.  
  
But then, in my fourth year, my first game against Harry and the Gryffindors. I blocked him; I faced him. And for the first time, I saw him up close.  
  
Him and his eyes. His vivid green eyes. I felt I could live quite comfortably for years in those eyes.  
  
How different would it have been if I had defied the Socially Acceptable, and asked Harry to the Yule Ball, instead of waiting for him to ask me, and getting chosen by Cedric instead. Because that was the only way it would have happened. Harry may have tried to ask me, but things came up or he ran off. And so in my mind he's stayed "the baby".  
  
Maybe this is the year he changes, the year that the baby finally grows up. If he changed, would I walk away from Ginny now?  
  
Impossible question, without an answer. I am what Ginny needs me to be, even if she doesn't know what she needs. I can be the Big Sister she never had; I can be the lover she never expected. And I can hope that she doesn't tire of either one, at least not anytime soon. But I don't harbour any illusions. She can always walk away from me. It's happened before.  
  
xxx  
  
So in the meantime here we are, the Firefly and the Butterfly, marking time in each other's Socially Unacceptable arms. 


End file.
